Analysis of Future Developments and Trends in Consulting Industry

This essay examines the future developments within the consulting industry, highlighting the impact of digitalization, the adoption of big data analytics, and the significance of data security. It explores how consultancy firms are integrating digital methodologies, such as digital discovery methods, to enhance efficiency in identifying and addressing client issues. The essay also discusses the trend of crowdsourcing and its implications, alongside the challenges posed by performance-based working models. It emphasizes the importance of digitalizing the delivery process, including presenting live data and dashboards to clients for transparency, and the need for firms to secure client data. The author recommends the implementation of big data analytics and digitalized procedures to improve business efficiency, protect client data, and utilize ERP and CRM software for better business outcomes.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN CONSULTING INDUSTRY
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN CONSULTING INDUSTRY
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1FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN CONSULTING INDUSTRY
Introduction
‘Consultancy’ as the term defines is the practise of giving suggestions to other
organizations in order to develop their existing processes and strategize new solutions for the
benefit of the organization itself (Poór et al., 2019). The success of an organization is highly
dependent on the management of the resources, assets as well as the activities. Hence, to
achieve a successful management system and set up an efficient managerial body, the
organizations take help from the consultancy services for gaining an insight about the
existing issues and access to the specialised expertise of the consultants for achieving smart
solutions to them.
Thus, it is the responsibility of the consultancy firms to provide assistance to the
organizations in various sectors such as developing coaching skills, analysing the processes,
develop strategies, and implement technologies and so on (Phelps & Wood, 2018). The
consultancy firms need to be up graded and in order to carry out these processes. Thus, they
are incorporating developments in their own industry and adopting trends to provide smarter
solutions to other organizations. This article will discuss the future developments that will be
acquired by the consulting industry.
Future Developments in Consulting Industry
Digitalization being the global phenomenon nowadays is being incorporated by
various organizations throughout the world. Hence, the consulting firms in order to enhance
their own processes and provide expertise solutions to the other companies need to adapt
digital methodologies and gain experience (Szeiner et al., 2020). They should first digitalize
their intellectual properties in order to start with the digitalization process. Established
consultancy firms such as McKinsey and Company and many more have standard
frameworks that they use repetitively for providing solutions to their clients. If they digitalize

2FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN CONSULTING INDUSTRY
their frameworks into digital platforms, they can use those frameworks repeatedly with
minimal effort. In addition, these digitalized frameworks can be shared easily amongst the
clients with consistent outputs. Moreover, consultancy firms tend to modify their frameworks
and solutions for meeting the demands of the clients (Boneva, 2018). Hence, they can in turn
create a library of frameworks that will assist them in analysing and developing innovative
solutions for future purpose.
Moreover, incorporating digitalization in their own firms will help them to improve
on their data security and maintain integrity of their data. Storing data in clouds will help the
firms access their own data from the centralized server making it easier for their accessibility
(Jerónimo, Pereira & Sousa, 2019, June). This will help the firms prevent their data from
malicious attacks and maintain consistency in their data as well as develop their brand name.
The organizations nowadays hardly compromise with the consultancy firms about the time
for the discovery process of the issues. Hence, the consultancy firms can incorporate digital
discovery methods to fasten up the process of identifying the issues. They can implement
digital discovery by survey methods. Although survey methodology incorporates huge
chunks of data and relevant information, it hardly helps the consultants to analyse the data
and gain an in-depth understanding of the data (Nissen, 2017). Again, conducting
personalised interviews within the organizations to understand their issues and detect the
lacking would be time consuming for the consultancy firms. Hence, the firms can incorporate
digital software like the 9Lense’s interview software that will not only conduct the survey
digitally, but also help in filtering the data and analyze them to give optimum services to the
clients from the initial period.
In the era of Big Data, it will be wise of the consultancy firms to adapt software that
will not only digitalize the discovery process but also generate automated analytics to
enhance their processes (Ustundag & Cevikcan, 2017). In case of the flattened organizations,

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only the opinion of the top-level management is not enough in providing solutions. The
consultancy firms need to incorporate huge amount of data while taking information from all
the levels of any organization (Larsson et al., 2019). This leads to constrain of resources for
smaller firms unless those huge chunks of data are minimized to relevant information. Thus,
the consultancy firms should generate software systems that will compress the data into
relevant information and perform the analysis at the same point of time and thus save time in
the whole procedure. This will also help the firms to reach to conclusions faster and generate
data-driven conclusions that are more reliable.
Previously, the consultancy firms used to provide solutions to the client organizations
in the PowerPoint presentation format that suggested the recommendations based on the
analysis and findings from the data. The organizations had to rely on the suggested
recommendations without being able to see the data themselves. However, nowadays the
companies are more involved in their processes and show a keen interest on the dissection of
the data that is done by the consultancy firms. Hence, to support these improvisations, the
consultancy firms need to digitalize their delivery process too. They need to present the
actual dashboards and live data to the clients and explain their process of analysis such that
the client is satisfied with the transparency in their process (Oesterle, Buchwald & Urbach,
2019). This will also reduce the necessity of the PowerPoint presentation in the end because,
by then, the customer will have a thorough understanding of the analysis and accept the
solutions suggested by the consultants.
The data of the client organizations acquired by the consultancy firms are equally
important as the intellectual property of them. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the
digitalization of the intellectual property of the firms helps them to ease out their functional
processes and maintain data security. The same goes for client data as well. The consultancy
firms should secure the data of the clients, maintain privacy, and in the process acquire trust

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of the customers. If the data is stored in the hard disk drives of the consultancy firms, the
whole responsibility lies with the firms in maintaining the security of the data (Buettner &
Timm, 2018). Hence, the firms should incorporate digital methods to create a traceable path
for the clients such that they can trace their confidentiality and security of the data and
identify the respective employees who worked on their projects.
Apart from the phenomenon of digitalization, the consulting industry are developing
smaller yet effective trends that prove to be helpful for the consultant in the industry. One
such trend is ‘crowdsourcing’. Nowadays, one consultancy firm does not have enough in-
house capabilities to support overall client service and attain satisfaction. Moreover, the
clients are also determined to achieve faster solution, hence consults more than one firm to
enhance their operations. Thus, the consultancy firms nowadays are adopting
‘crowdsourcing’ model, where they are gathering multiple freelancers or start-up
consultancies who will assist them in various sectors of a large project with their expertize
(Ebert & Duarte, 2016, September). This form of partnership allows mutual benefit for both
the in-house consultants as well as the freelancers and smaller firms. The primary firm can
get their work done at ease with the helping hand of the other parties. The freelancers as well
as the smaller firms can gain their experience while delivering solutions for larger
consultancy firms.
However, not all trends upcoming in the consulting industry are beneficial. For
instance, the ‘performance-based working’ methodology adapted by the clients can affect the
smaller consultancy firms at large. Nowadays, the clients believe in outcome rather than the
process followed for the outcome. Hence, they are not ready to pay the consultancy firms on
the hours of input given by them. Rather, they are focusing more on whether the procedure
followed by them has yielded the required success as per the requirement of the clients and
their objectives. Although, this methodology does not affect the larger firms because they

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have a standard library of frameworks to support their system, the smaller firms are quite
affected by this process. They have to take much pressure in convincing their clients about
the effectiveness of their solution by clearly defining the analysis, findings and discussions
only after which they will get their payments (Shakya, Shrestha & Mishra, 2019). Hence,
these smaller firms can land up in trouble if the clients are not ready to pay the amount they
deserve for their hard work.
Conclusion
The consulting industries all over the world are improving their processes in order to
satisfy their clients and in the process gain more clients in future. Hence, they are adopting
the current trends in terms of technology as well as operations that are having both positive
and negative effects on the industry. The process of digitalization are bound to have a great
impact on the consulting industry. This will help them to improve their operations and secure
their data at large. They can also attain client satisfaction by maintaining confidentiality of
the client data too. Digitalization will help the consulting industry to adopt different analytics
software and present live data to the client for their better understanding. However, not all
trends are beneficial like the ‘performance-based payment’ where the client will pay only
when the outcome is successful. Hence, the consulting industry for the best interest of their
smaller firms should look into the matter and take required steps to solve the issue.
Recommendations
As a recommendation to the entire procedure of digitalization among the consulting
firms, I recommend that every individual consulting firm should implement the particular
usage of big data analytics to ensure the fact that their business procedures become more
efficient. In addition to this, I recommend that consulting firms should make use of
digitalized procedures to provision the clients with knowledge with the help of various

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dashboards and in live form. The consulting firms are in possession of huge amounts of data
that need to be protected for the safeguard of the privacy belonging to the client. As a result,
it is recommended that the consulting firms make use of proper security software and cloud
based services to protect the privacy of the data that is sensitive information to the firm. In
addition to this, I recommend the use of ERP and CRM software to manage all the business
procedures in a better way for better business outcomes and growth of the organization.

7FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS IN CONSULTING INDUSTRY
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